REVIEW : Pro Basketball Manager 2022 (PC)
Umix Studios’ Pro Basketball Manager 2022 is the newest in a long line of basketball management games. The franchise began in 2014 and is currently the lone contender for the title of greatest basketball management simulator. The database is usually the issue with these low-budget sports management games. You’re doomed if you can’t provide a large database of players in a complex-yet-intuitive management gameplay loop. If you can’t provide a large database, try to provide an editor or a foundation for the Steam Workshop community to help you overcome these problems. This is why Football Manager has been a huge hit for years, but We Are Football was a flop from the start.
The basketball version of my favourite sports-themed spreadsheet simulator, Pro Basketball Manager 2022, offers the intuitive gameplay and every nook and corner you’d expect from the basketball version of my favourite sports-themed spreadsheet simulator. You employ and trade players, schedule weekly training sessions, manage contracts, and so on. I enjoy how you can automatically determine how many minutes a player will play per match, streamlining the experience and eliminating the need to manually substitute each player every time. You can still do it, but you can spend your time on more important things like tactics and strategic timeouts.
The vast number of basketball clubs available in Pro Basketball Manager 2022 is what really sets it apart. Pro Basketball Manager 2022 includes 160 playable competitions distributed across 55 countries, including 25 international competitions, 11 continental competitions, 12 female competitions, and more than 40 national cups. It can be daunting at first, but you can limit your game to simply the leagues you want to play in.
As expected, the game is a collection of clean and simplified spreadsheets with its own polygonal match simulation that runs on Unity. I’d be lying if I thought these polygonal models looked good (they certainly don’t), but I don’t care, just like in Football Manager. I’m not interested in the graphical realism; I’m here for the findings and simulation. That is what the NBA is all about. The menus are simple enough, but there are a surprising number of bugs throughout the game, not only where you’d expect them (player animations), but even when trying to load a page or randomly stalling when clicking on a player. I understand why this happens frequently in FM because I’m simulating a database of about 150k footballers, but it shouldn’t happen in a basketball simulation with a fraction of the roster size.
Speaking of rosters, Pro Basketball Manager 2022’s “basic” version includes a slew of leagues, hundreds to be exact. In addition to managing male and female teams, you can also coach a national team while working at your club. That being said, this is a typical low-budget game with a limited budget for licencing payments. You’re confined to the French league when it comes to real team names, players, and logos. Every other team, league, and player has a make-believe name.
That would normally have been a problem. When I started playing We Are Football, that was a deal breaker for me. Pro Basketball Manager 2022, unlike THQ Nordic’s effort at creating a sports management simulator, has a well-established fanbase thanks to its predecessors. Bless them, since almost soon after the game’s release, there was a freely available, easy-to-download datapack on Steam Workshop. Every team name, every NBA player, it was all there, giving me that shock of immersion I want from games like this. And with that, I continued to spend a lot of time playing Pro Basketball Manager 2022, despite the game’s lack of sound and some minor but irritating UI flaws.
Pro Basketball Manager 2022 isn’t particularly impressive in terms of graphics, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. Because management games like this are essentially spreadsheet managers, improved aesthetics can frequently be counterproductive. The more leagues you have in the game, the more graphic assets must be loaded, and the game becomes slower. I found that decreasing the graphic settings helped me, and you should do the same. The menus are the only graphics that matter, and they have a clean look to them. I’d argue that they look a little old at times and can be difficult to navigate at first, but once you get the feel of the design, everything works out nicely.
If you enjoyed Football Manager, you’ll enjoy this game as well. Sadly, even with a tiny database, there are several bugs, with the game stuttering and freezing at random. I appreciate Pro Basketball Manager 2022’s clear menu and interface designs, even if its 3D engine isn’t the most impressive (on the opposite). The dull menu’s aesthetics are actually more essential than the sportsmen themselves in a game like this. It’s not the most polished sports management experience available, but it has every nook and cranny you’ll need to immerse yourself in your own personal basketball management storey.
